Chapter 16
Ever
THE CRACKLING OF A WELDING machine and the sharp sound of a grinder fill the garage. The steady clicking from my ratchet is like the rhythm section to a song I’ve heard a thousand times before, and yet I still can’t decide if I love it or hate it.
“There?.?.?. got it,” I grunt to myself and then wiggle out from under my cycle.
I check my right stabilizer from this angle and nod.
Hopefully, that adjustment will keep it from trying to dump me in the sand like it was doing before.
I give the sandcycle a final once-over and grab my helmet off the floor just in case I’m wrong about the stabilizer fixing the issue.
With a tired huff, I lower the sandcycle from where it’s being held in the air.
The steady thrum of the lift cuts off when the flier is once again resting on sand, and I unhook the clamps from around my ride and fold them out of the way.
“Here goes nothing,” I murmur, pulling on my helmet and climbing onto the machine I half fabricated and most definitely enhanced over the last day or so.
The sandcycle rumbles to life beneath me, and I flip the switch and toe the pedal that levitates it into the air.
I lean forward and slowly steer out of the bay I’ve been working in.
My helmet visor automatically darkens to adjust to the bright day, and stats begin to tick across the screen in front of me as the tech registers my surroundings.
I clear the garage and pick up speed, maneuvering around camp and pushing the limits of the sandcycle as best I can in the confines of the wards.
It’s no longer pulling to the right like it was before, and the ride is much smoother now that I’ve tweaked the intake valves.
I smile to myself and set the sandcycle down next to the others near the training facility.
A familiar sense of pride and comfort cascades through me as I climb off and pluck my helmet from my head.
In Four Tiers, I had no choice but to fumble through a world I didn’t know. I was out of my element in every possible way, juggling the overwhelming and the unfamiliar, all from my back foot. But this—I give the flier a proud little pat—I know this.
I can take apart, repair, and reassemble with nothing more than scraps, a few tools, and some ingenuity.
Here, I can trust the mechanics of something.
If the correct parts are put together in the proper order and given the right fuel, a machine will do what it’s supposed to do at least eighty percent of the time.
There’s no betrayal or manipulation. It’s not going to ask you to be its mate and then accuse you of treachery.
And it sure as shit isn’t scheming behind your back or interested in stealing your blood.
Spilling it is another matter altogether, but seven times out of ten, that’s operator error.
“Is she still bucking like a bronco?” Enslee calls from the back of Craith’s flier as he sets it down across from mine.
“No. I’ve got her sorted now,” I shout back.
I duck my face into the neck of my shirt to prevent the sand from blasting me, and keep it that way until I hear Craith kill his engine.
He and Iker returned late last night and confirmed the other Syphons made it onto the boat just fine and left without any further complications.
They should be a quarter of the way to their destination by now, and not a minute too soon either.
The loam hounds were out first thing this morning, and it took them and the dragons less time than I anticipated to discover our tunnel, map it, breach it, and then block it off.
Enslee climbs off the sandcycle and wipes sweat from her brow with the sleeve of her shirt.
She looks up at the sky, in search of dragons, but I haven’t spotted any in the air since they drove a tornado into our wards just over an hour ago.
They know something is here, but they haven’t made any other attempts to figure out what yet.
I have a feeling it’s because they’re waiting on orders.
Most of Aeson’s Wing is here now, but Ogdan, Sondar, and the commander himself haven’t been spotted.
He’s either off doing something somewhere else or he’s hiding in one of his oversized tents while Sondar and Ogdan fan him with palm fronds and feed him chilled grapes.
I sigh and shake out my hands. My nerves are shot at this point, not that they were in the best shape to begin with.
The presence of all these dragons has my fight or flight really fucking confused.
Nothing is happening, which is good and a bad, but it’s the waiting that fucks with you.
By the time anything pops off, you’re already half-crazed just from the anticipation of it.
“Six fliers ready to go,” Craith announces as he climbs off the last one that needed attention. “The gear is ready too. Mayur just needs to adjust the respirators on a couple of helmets, and we’re all set.”
“Everyone has their chutes?” Enslee asks.
“Sure do,” Craith confirms.
“Wyverns are set?” I chime in, and he lobs a smile and then a nod my way.
“We’re as ready as we’ll ever be,” he assures confidently, but it does little to assuage my persistent worry, and going off the welling concern in my sister’s gaze, it missed the mark with her too.
I lean back against my cycle and study the others sporadically parked around the clearing between the training area and the stack.
The sandcycles are a strange amalgamation of an old-world superbike and a jet that’s been patched together with the latest magi-tech that sorcai blood can buy on the black market.
The front is bulky but aerodynamic. There’s an open cockpit of sorts with a windscreen that protects varying instruments and controls.
The fliers are designed to be ridden forward leaning, which leaves the operator straddling a volatile engine that’s only happy when achieving speeds that are either breakneck or supersonic.
Either way, you’re probably not surviving any kind of crash, but at least you had fun flying the death mobile before meeting a fiery end.
A whirring fills my ears, and my head snaps up to find Gable flying down the zip line.
“Inbound,” he shouts. “The arch just lit up.”
“Shit, we need our packs,” Enslee directs as the others spill out from all over to take in what’s happening.
“I got them,” Olinta volunteers, and then she and Vero run back into the stack.
Craith and Gable are already climbing the shipping containers to get back up to the guard peak in order to monitor the situation.
I should be following them, but for some reason, I’m frozen in place.
I have my suspicions about who is going to come striding through that activated arch, and all at once, I can’t decide if I’m desperate to see him or desperate to get as far away as possible.
“It’s going to be okay,” Enslee reassures me. “We’re ready. We’ve got this.”
I pull in a deep breath and hope she’s right.
In theory, our plan works, but pulling it off is a whole different reality, especially when you’re going up against The Horde.
Out of nowhere, a strange staticky sensation swells through me and then disappears just as quickly as it came.
I gasp, and my eyes grow wide as I clutch at my chest.
“Aeson is here,” I hiss, certain despite having no idea how.
Enslee reels back. “Shit. You can feel him like that?”
“I couldn’t before,” I contend, like it matters, because I sure as fuck feel him now.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Does this mean he can feel me too?
I wave off that thought and the panic that tries to accompany it. Even if he can sense me, he still has the wards to contend with. This changes nothing. The Horde was always going to figure things out eventually. This is exactly what we’ve prepared for.
“Three inbound,” Mayur calls out, and I look over to see he’s reading Gable’s hand signals from the top of the stack. “Aeson Noctis and two others,” Mayur confirms. “They’re in a tent, no other activity as of now.”
Olinta and Vero come jogging into the clearing with several packs in each hand.
Enslee and I get to work strapping packs to their owners’ sandcycles just in case we need to make a break for it sooner than we thought.
I don’t think the dragons will breach our wards that easily, but I also know better than to underestimate Aeson and his Wing.
“Anyone else? Any other Wings or Flights?” I shout to Mayur who signs the question up at Gable.
Gable turns to study the camp and then signs “no”.
I don’t know if I’m offended or flattered that Aeson hasn’t brought in additional backup.
He could be underestimating us, or it could be a protective measure.
Then again reinforcements could also be hiding for all we know, his backup might easily be keeping their distance to help lull us into a false sense of security.
I growl, tired of this hurry-up-and-wait game. Olinta and Vero bring out the last of the packs, and all of us make quick work of securing them to our fliers. I’m tempted to put my riding gear on, but I hold off, waiting for the signal.
It feels like hours before anything happens. I have no idea how long we’re actually standing around waiting to see what the dragons will do now. My thoughts and emotions teeter-totter between anxious and fuck it . I swear it feels as though Aeson’s drawing things out just to fuck with me.
Motion at the top of the stack draws everyone’s attention, and then adrenaline pistons through my system when Craith, Gable, and Iker all come zipping down the line like their lives depend on it.
“Gear up!” Mayur shouts at the same time Iker warns, “Incoming!”